NVIDIA today unveiled a range of NVIDIA Quadro professional graphics products that offer unprecedented workstation performance and capabilities for professionals in manufacturing, engineering, medical, architectural, and media and entertainment companies.

"With NVIDIA Kepler GPUs, we can create fully ray-trace rendered images of a bike before we actually build it," said Nick Schoeps, senior engineer at MotoCzysz, a Portland, Ore., engineering firm that designs, builds and races custom electric motorcycles. "Previously we'd rely only on still renders or low-fidelity motion during design reviews. With Quadro Kepler, we can work with highest quality settings always on. That's a huge advantage and something we hadn't been able to do before."

Built on the ultra-efficient processing power of the NVIDIA Kepler architecture -- the world's fastest, most efficient GPU architecture -- the new lineup includes:

NVIDIA Quadro K4000 - A high-end card that delivers blazing-fast performance for graphics-intensive applications. Has 3GB of onboard memory, multi-monitor support and stereo capability in a single-slot configuration.

NVIDIA Quadro K2000 - A midrange card that offers outstanding performance with a broad range of professional applications. Comes with 2GB of onboard memory to hold large models and multi-monitor support for enhanced desktop productivity.

NVIDIA Quadro K2000D - A variant of the Quadro K2000, with native support for two dual-link DVI display connectors for interfacing with ultra-high-resolution medical imaging displays.

NVIDIA Quadro K600 - An entry-level card with great performance and certifications for leading professional applications. Equipped with 1 GB of onboard memory, comes in a low-profile design for maximum usage flexibility.

The new cards expand the Quadro technology family -- which includes Quadro K5000, Quadro K5000 for Mac, and the complete Quadro mobile workstation product lineup -- to deliver an unmatched professional application experience, enhanced visual workspace and proven Quadro compatibility and reliability. Features include:

Support for up to four displays from a single card, enabling desktop workspace expansion for higher productivity and dramatically simplified deployment of display walls and immersive display environments.

Scale-up computation using the second generation NVIDIA Maximus platform, which pairs the Quadro card with an NVIDIA Tesla K20 GPU compute card.

Easily scale applications to higher resolution using NVIDIA Mosaic technology, which combines up to 16 displays as a single large display.

"NVIDIA Quadro with Kepler architecture offers no-compromise workflow acceleration for customers with exacting computing and graphics demands," said Sandeep Gupte, senior director of the Professional Solutions Group at NVIDIA. "Kepler offers a future-safe GPU solution, whether professionals are integrating more realism and physics into their manufacturing designs or dealing with the complex demands of 4K workflows in broadcast and film."

Unleashing Distinctive Capabilities Across Industries
In manufacturing and AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) industries, professionals can work with complete assemblies and visualize more of their designs, with more realism, across a larger display surface. Architects can now harness the compute power of Quadro GPUs to showcase their vision to clients with amazing realism, using physically accurate rendering techniques.

In media and entertainment, content creators can enjoy fast performance and features that enable them to tell dramatic visual stories without interrupting their creative flow. Film editors and animators can work with more interactive visual effects to create richer scenes with more textures and smooth interactivity.

"Our Kepler-based Quadro card driving the Premiere Pro Mercury Playback Engine blew away our Final Cut performance," said Anthony Safarik, editorial supervisor at Stargate Studios, an award-winning production company in South Pasadena, Calif. "With the Quadro K5000 and Adobe Premiere Pro, we eliminated an hour of upfront rendering and another 20 minutes of rendering the linear effect on top of that. That's substantial time savings, especially when a roomful of producers, directors and visual effects supervisors are standing over your shoulder."

That's why I mention "Suite users". Those using Photoshop alone may not reap as much benefit. Though there is one benefit of a Quadro that still applies here - I don't have to worry nearly as much anymore

Standard cards are fine - as long as you can troubleshoot your own problems and do driver installs/rollbacks. My friend can't (and doesn't care to learn). So I was really glad when nVidia put out a cheapie Quadro. I told him that the 600 is the card for you and there hasn't been a card-related problem since.

It would be fun if TPU did a review of these VS a normal Geforce, in CAD programs I would like to know how much better the workstation cards are. I would think these to be about 20%+ better than their counterpart.

I'd like to know if it's possible to flash a Quadro BIOS to a corresponding standard GeForce, then install Quadro drivers for it... Common sense says it should be possible, but it's also sure as death nVidia thought of such a possibility and placed a safeguard or ten to prevent it.

Standard cards are fine - as long as you can troubleshoot your own problems and do driver installs/rollbacks. My friend can't (and doesn't care to learn). So I was really glad when nVidia put out a cheapie Quadro. I told him that the 600 is the card for you and there hasn't been a card-related problem since.

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Kind of weired him being in software but not be able to install drivers or trouble shoot

I'd like to know if it's possible to flash a Quadro BIOS to a corresponding standard GeForce, then install Quadro drivers for it... Common sense says it should be possible, but it's also sure as death nVidia thought of such a possibility and placed a safeguard or ten to prevent it.

It would be fun if TPU did a review of these VS a normal Geforce, in CAD programs I would like to know how much better the workstation cards are. I would think these to be about 20%+ better than their counterpart.

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Well, we all know the cards are near identical with some fuses blown and/or different code paths in the driver. Pretty sure some of the artificial limitations placed on the consumer line are pretty severe wrt some operations.

I never look for short nor simple answers in life... Care to elaborate? Speaking from personal experience? I'm not contesting your statement, I just like excess information beyond the purely functional answers.

It would be fun if TPU did a review of these VS a normal Geforce, in CAD programs I would like to know how much better the workstation cards are. I would think these to be about 20%+ better than their counterpart.

I never look for short nor simple answers in life... Care to elaborate? Speaking from personal experience? I'm not contesting your statement, I just like excess information beyond the purely functional answers.

Click to expand...

AFAIK It used to be simple...only change the GPU ID and the driver would see it as a FirePro/Quadro, or flash a FirePro/Quadro BIOS.
Drivers don't only check the ID anymore and BIOS flash doesn't give you the same results anymore (if you manage not to brick the card).

The only option used to be softmoding - using a patchscript and by that modding the driver itself.
The problem is you need to keep modifying the script for every driver update and for new generations of cards - and as far as I know, it's not as simple as it was.

from what i undestand, when a chip comes off the production line at Nvidia, it is both a Geforce and a Quadro. The differentiation i done probably by testing the different functions of the chip and deciding which one is suitable for the Quadro name.

AND, most importantly, the cards that are binned as GeForce have parts of the circuitry LASER ETCHED, so it's impossible to softmod it.

From my research the last card that was able to be softmoded was the 8800GT, and the 9800GT that was based on the 8800GT was not. I softmoded my 6600GT to it's Quadro equivalent and it had new features in Solidowrks, where RealView (an advanced viewport rendering mode) is only enabled on Quadro cards. I've seen other 3D professional software run on GeForce without any feature disabled. And Adobe includes the GeForce 680 amongst it's Mercury Playback Engine certified cars.

Basically you pay extra for the tight quality control, the specially developed drivers for professional software, the special support connection and the assurance that every pixel pushed out of the card is correct. I noticed that the top Quadro cards even have ECC memory (although that kinda' invalidates my last statement about pixel perfection for the mid-low level Quadros).